**BRIANNA POV**
Howin and I were standing a distance away from everyone else in the group. Howin and I didn't have a close relationship, but his obliviousness made him easy to talk to.
The confrontation between the rest of them wasn't quiet. I overheard everything as it was escalating. What was David thinking, inviting Tianna here? Ashur and Tianna were a terrible combination. Ashur wasn't a nice person in the first place, but he knew that the rest of us didn't like the way he acts.
When Tianna is around, and he knows that he has company, he unleashes all of his negative traits. Maybe he was telling the truth when he said he didn't like it, but that doesn't excuse it. Adrian used to keep him in check.
We hated it whenever he went into "Tianna mode", but some of us weren't all that confrontational while the rest of us wanted to solve the problem calmly or wanted to give Ashur a chance to change in his own time. There was one person, however, who never took shit from Ashur.
Even when Lith was still Howin's height, weighed even less, and had to look up to Ashur, he and Ashur always argued. Countless times, Adrian and Rashidi had to hold them back before Ashur got the chance to snap Lith in half, Lith didn't ever seem to realize how small he was, though, so he was always ready to get into it.
Now that Lith had a fighting chance against Ashur, he didn't lose that fighting spirit. When it came to those two, it was always chaos. The only thing that the rest of us could do was hope that Rashidi would intervene before they kill each other or that Lith would have some compassion towards David and be the bigger person.
I made my way over to my purse, ready to leave if things got messy. Sorry, David. I can't handle seeing us break apart again.
Lith ignored everyone else and walked up to David. "I'm here," he said, despite not sounding thrilled to be.
"Took you long enough."
He stopped chewing on the straw that he had in his mouth and looked at the source of the voice. Tianna's hands were folded as he inspected her with his gaze.
"What are you doing here?"
Tianna sneered. "I can go wherever I want, last time I checked." She then pointed to Ashur. "And Besides, your leader said that I could come here."
Leader?
The way she said it was like she was talking about some higher authority than Lith and the rest of us.
Lith raised an eyebrow as he smirked. "Ohhh! How could I forget? Our leader!" He approached Ashur, who already seemed to be on his guard. When they were face to face, Lith did an exaggerated bow before him, which obviously made Ashur feel stupid. "I'm sorry, leader, I should have spoken to you first before I talked to your jester, huh?"
The jester's face turned a deep shade of red and she huffed. "Who do you-"
Lith raised his voice to cover hers. "I was being nice when I talked to your clown instead of you, earlier, but she says that you're the boss so..." He cleared his throat. "What are you doing here, mur-?"
Multiple heads snapped to Lith.
"Lith!" shouted both Shiloh and Rashidi.
"Hey!" David interrupted. He laughed sheepishly as three sets of glares focused on him. "Did you guys hear about all the people and their stuff going missing? Crazy, right?"
It took a moment for the rest of us to recover, but Shiloh got the message first. "Yeah! My mom's friend was actually one of them. They didn't talk much, but..." She relayed to us what her mom had told her. A family of nine went to bed one night, lights out and everything. The only person who was awake was the oldest sibling, a guy our age. He said that he was talking to someone on his phone when the signal went bad. The next thing he knew, there was a loud sound booming throughout the house, like extremely heavy bass.
He said that the house had been feeling off for a few hours before then, but this is when it really hit him; a feeling of displacement. It was for a short while, but when he recovered from his vertigo, he made sure to check to see if the rest of his family was doing fine. They weren't. He searched throughout the house, but he couldn't find anyone except for his infant brother.
"That cannot be true," Rashidi said suspiciously.
"That's what I heard from my mother."
"You are trying to tell me that a house disappeared?"
"Not the house, Rashidi, just the people and their furniture."
"Yes. So the entire house."
"...I guess."
Rashidi's parents were devout Christians and so was Rashidi, but he didn't believe in any supernatural events or activities.
"I cannot believe that."
"What do you expect me to say, then? Nobody has seen them around town."
"Good point."
"What do you think it was?" asked David.
"Howin's big bubby going on a rampage, probably," Lith said matter-of-factly.
David and Shiloh were the only ones who seemed to get the joke. They laughed and Howin sighed with disappointment. "Shiloh, you're not supposed to be like them," he whined. She covered her mouth to block her laughter and looked at him apologetically.
"It's probably a murderer or something," suggested Wynn.
Ashur folded his arms. "Bro. How would a murderer wipe a whole family off the map in what? Ten seconds?"
"Yeah. They probably got isekai'd or something."
Many of us, including myself, must have looked confusedly at Howin, so he explained. "It's like when you get transported to another world."
"Like what? Mars?" Inquired Tianna.
"No. Like another earth."
"Ohh Alexia told me about that anime stuff."
His eyes lit up.
"See. It isn't just them who went missing, though. Some people from Newport disappeared, too. A girl from the drama club went missing yesterday. She asked me to go to the bathroom and just didn't come back.
I know she couldn't have left because her bag was still in the clubroom and I didn't think that she would need an escort to go to another part of the school. Her parents are worried sick, but there is no way that a murderer or a kidnapper could have made it into our school and took a student in broad daylight. Doesn't stop the Madame principal from blaming it on the club, though." She gritted her teeth as she spoke.
I looked away in embarrassment. The principal of our school is someone very close to me, my mother. It sounded like something that she would do. She wasn't always like that, of course, but she became a different person when it came to education; an evil, mean, vindictive witch.
Everyone in the group groaned at her mention, but kept their mouths shut. They didn't like to say too much when I was around, but I couldn't help but wonder what they said about her when I wasn't, or worse, about me.
I didn't want to have to defend her, but she was the only parent that I had left. Some of them could understand what that felt like. Lith, Wynn, Shiloh and Calvin were all like me in that regard.
That didn't mean that I was blind. Even I could see that she was crazy. She caused all sorts of problems between Adrian and I when we were still together... when Adrian was still alive.
We traded ideas for the next few minutes. Howin stood by his isekai thing, David said it was aliens, Wynn and I insisted it was a murderer or kidnapper, Shiloh and Rashidi agreed that if it wasn't explainable, it was probably divine judgement, Tianna and Ashur thought it was a hoax, and Calvin thought it was something gang related; an organized crime thing.
Lith lost interest somewhere in the middle of the conversation and had left the grove to go sit somewhere else in the park. Everyone had seen him leave, of course, but we couldn't force him to be around us.
There was nothing wrong with David's meeting, and I was completely willing to bite my tongue to be around some of these people: The date was a bad choice. Choosing the anniversary of a friend's death was too romanticized in his eyes, I think.
After moving to David's side, I whispered in his ear an excuse that I made up. "I'm going to go check on Lith. I'll be back in a sec." but really, I just wanted to distance myself from the group.
At first, he desperately tried to convince me that Lith would be fine. I understood that he really looked forward to the meeting, but I just didn't want to be there anymore. I was doing enough by distancing myself instead of leaving.
When I insisted that I wanted to check on Lith, it seemed for a second that David was getting angry at me. I knew David for the longest, and I had never seen his eyes narrow at someone like that. His anger quickly dissipated into disappointment, and amid the chatter of the group, he withdrew his point.
Lith had the right idea: be sad somewhere else, so you wouldn't kill the vibe. I left my purse with Wynn before leaving to join Lith on the bench of sadness.
As soon as I made it through the path of hedges that represented the grove's exit, I spotted Lith on a bench that was near the grove. Unlike those inside the grove, this one actually had a backrest and was made of stone. It had a peculiar design, branched like a tree, a bold choice by Wynn's father.
Lith always took up entire benches by lying down, instead of sitting like a respectful individual. He was face-up, gazing at the street lamp above him. The bright light accentuated his brown eyes, as well as his emotionless gaze and expression.
"Why are you so disrespectful? Can't you see other people want a seat?" I joked.
The Lith I knew would have said something playful back to me, but this one silently sat up and made me a space beside him. The depressing atmosphere was more welcoming to me than the cheerful conversation and laughter from everyone at the table, so I was still grateful.
We sat there in silence. The whole time, he was gazing longingly at the table that he had abandoned. He didn't even try to hide it.
"You miss it, don't you?" I asked.
There was a moment of silence in which he slowly turned his head away from them before answering. "It's gone."
"It doesn't have to be. All you have to do is go over there and start laughing with them like you used to do. I'll do it if you do it."
For the first time in months, he looked at me. "Alright then. Let's go right now."
On second thought... "...I don't want to."
"That's what I thought."
This was the first time that Lith and I had spoken in months. Originally, I tried to find some companionship with him during the grieving process, but every time I tried to speak to him, he gave me an ambiguous smile and walked away.
"When did everything change?"
"You don't want me to answer that," he said matter-of-factly. He didn't seem to want to answer it either, but I knew what he would say if he did.
My expression must have been sad because he continued. "You can move on, you know? I shouldn't blame you guys for what happened."
"Yeah. Only Ashur, right?"
Silence.
"Remember how we used to sit and laugh in biology class? Every single day, you would make me laugh throughout the entire session. There were so many days that it took me until I got home to realize that I didn't even take any notes.
My mother always got mad at me about the Jeden brothers: the little one was wasting my time during biology, and the other one was making me fail every other class."
"It's not just Adrian that I miss. I miss both of you. I think about the days when I would ask you to pass long, corny love letters to him and the days after, when you came back to me, all excited, with a letter from him."
My voice was cracking as I spoke. I really didn't want to cry in front of Lith. I knew I didn't have the right to, but I couldn't hold back the tears. I thought I had already gotten past that stage.
Once he realized I was crying, he closed his eyes. He couldn't handle seeing other people cry without having his eyes water.
"That's even more gone than they are," he said, speaking about everyone at the table. "I don't mean to be insensitive, but that person might be even more gone than my brother."
"You're trying to convince me you're dead now?"
He pulled a handkerchief from his hoodie pocket and gave it to me. "You never know who a person is, no matter how well you think you do. You saw the boyfriend side of my older brother, while they saw his friend side. Naturally, I saw the brother's side of him. All these different sides make up who a person is, right?"
"I guess, but-"
"The reason they got over it so easy is that the angle they got to see wasn't as meaningful as the one we saw. In all of our lives, Adrian died at different times. In reality, his heart only stopped beating once. For me, he died when Ashur told me he did, but for you guys, he died when he hit the ground. Adrian lasted longer in my life either way, whether we go from the beginning or go from the end. You also spent more time with him than anyone else. I'm sure that you know things about him I never will and things that I never want to."
"Anyway, what I mean to say is this: Your Lith is dead. He died when your Adrian did, just like how my "squad" died when Adrian did. I'm only here because David asked me to be here."
Silence hung in the air, periodically interrupted by the sounds of my crying. Tears rhythmically fell onto my lap as I gripped the handkerchief that he gave me. It was one of Adrian's. As soon as I recognized the design, I wanted to give it back. Like any girlfriend, I "borrowed" things from my boyfriend: sweaters, perfumes, shirts and handkerchiefs. Adrian never complained when I did, but he would always take this one away from me whenever I took it from him.
He told me that this one was his favorite, given to him by his father before he died. I didn't try borrowing it after that, but now that he was gone, I was finding it difficult to return it to his brother, who would have an even greater attachment to it than I did. I felt selfish for that, and I felt pathetic for crying when I shouldn't have been.
Internally, I wished I was more like Shiloh. Even though she was a young woman like me, she blended in with the boys and controlled her emotions. I scolded myself by biting hard into my lip, something that she told me she did, but didn't recommend that I do. It had the opposite effect, and I only cried more.
Lith chuckled, not in a mean way, but it still made me feel worse. I wanted to merge with the bench. "The old Shiloh tip, huh?" I didn't look up at him, but his voice sounded like he was completely fine, unlike me.
Silence hung in the air once more before he spoke again, as if he decided something. "I don't care if you cry or not," he said.
Of everything that I expected to hear, this was not one of them. I cried even harder. A steady stream of tears flowed out of my eyes as I stared at the cloth in my hand. Memories of Adrian and I, as well as Lith and I, ran through my mind, but for the first time, I didn't try to repress them.
I know that what he said sounds awful, but I guess you would have to be there to understand. It didn't sound mean, like he meant it to hurt me, nor did it sound kind, like he was trying to console me about breaking down in front of him. Knowing that I wouldn't burden or annoy someone with my tears was just... freeing.
The whole time, Lith didn't try to hold my hand like Wynn would, in an effort to comfort me, nor did he give me a hug and try to talk it out like David. It was almost like being alone, but having someone beside you.
I cried for what felt like hours, before I finally, and barely, regained my composure. The first thing that came to my sober mind was the state of the handkerchief that he gave me. I profusely apologized when I noticed how much damage I did to its cleanliness.
"I'll wash it and bring it back on Monday, I promise!"
He lazily waved a hand at me. "Shut up and take it, bro."
"What?" I asked in disbelief.
"It's fine. Take it." He insisted. "I genuinely don't need it, especially after the hell you put it through." He seemed uncomfortable with my persistence, but I needed to make sure that he was sure about this.
"I can just wash it and give it back to you, though!" As I raised my voice, he seemed to shrink back a little. He looked around frantically, as if to make sure that nobody was watching.
He groaned audibly. "Can you just leave me alone and take it?" He turned his face away from me, but I could see his frustrated expression.
"Are you sure?!"
"I brought it for you, Brianna, God!"
I froze, stunned by his frustrated shout. It was like he was worried about his caring side being exposed.
Lith hated doing good things for people, almost as much as he hated...
"Thank you, Lith."
He gritted his teeth and his face contorted into a disgusted expression. "Please, Brianna. Just stop talking. Go back to the rest of them or something." He pleaded while shooing me with his hands.
"What are you doing, Lith!?" chastised David.
Our heads turned to the left side, where everyone who was sitting at the table had appeared. Lith didn't look all that surprised to see them.
"What?"
"We heard you shouting at Brianna from inside the grove. She just came out here to check on you, now we find her here crying? What's wrong with you?"
He was silent for a long moment, probably confirming whatever David was accusing him of. I was embarrassed that my crying got him in trouble, but I was ready to jump in and clear up the misunderstanding before it got any worse.
Once again, Lith seemed to have reached a conclusion before he decided what to say next. Instead of reacting or responding to their harsh gazes, he said calmly to me, in front of everyone, "Don't say anything."
I shouldn't tell them about the handkerchief?